Page 154 of Brutal Vows

He lowers his head until our noses are touching and I’m trying not to go cross-eyed because he’s so close. His voice deadly soft and his body vibrating tension, he commands, “Finish. That. Sentence.”

I swallow and moisten my lips, wondering if this is what a mouse feels like when it spots the hungry cat about to pounce on it. Very softly, I admit, “Not before I met you.”

Pressed against my hip, his erection throbs.

Seriously, the man takes too many vitamins.

He grips my jaw in his big hand. He slides a heavy leg over both of mine. Holding me in his searing gaze, he says, “So what I’m hearing you say, Reyna Caruso, is that you want to have children…with me.”

I snap, “Not if they’re going to have your scary intensity gene. They’ll terrorize all the other kids at school.”

“Say it. You want to have my children.”

“Quinn—”

“How many? Tell me.”

“Can we please—”

“If you think I’m letting you out of this room before we finish this conversation, you’re bloody mad.”

I say through gritted teeth, “Fine. If you must know how many fantasy offspring I’d like, the answer is five.”

His blazing eyes flare wide. In an elated, astonished whisper, he says,“Five.”

My God. I’ve created a monster. If I thought his ego was big before, now there will be no containing it. We’ll have to move out to the country on a hundred-acre farm to give it enough space.

I say tartly, “Or maybe none. I’m just winging it here. You put me on the spot.”

He rolls on top of me and grips my head in his hands. He kisses me. So wildly, it’s as if he wants to eat my soul right out of my body.

I try to push him off, but the man weighs a ton. And there’s that erection to contend with. The thing has a mind of its own, not to mention the appetite of a teenage athlete.

When he finally breaks the kiss, he’s breathing hard, his eyes are ablaze, and his expression can only be described as exultant. He looks as if he just returned from a trip to heaven where he took a personal meeting with God himself.

“You want my children.”

I cover my eyes with a hand.

He pulls it away and insists, “You want me to get you pregnant.”

I groan.

He laughs, and it sounds crazed. “That’s why you begged me to come inside you, baby.You want me to knock you up.”

“What I really want is to go back in time to before we had this stupid conversation.”

“Oh, no,” he says, still laughing. “That cat’s out of the bag, lass. You might not want to be my wife, but you want to grow my babies in your belly.Fiveof them.”

“I feel like this is a good time to remind you that I’m perfectly capable of murder.”

He kisses me again, then rolls onto his back, flings his arms out, and laughs at the ceiling. He laughs and laughs, shaking the bed, until I rise, pulling the fuzzy blanket around me.

With as much dignity as I can muster, I say, “I’ll be in the bathroom until room service arrives. Enjoy this moment, funny boy. Laugh it up. Because when you wake up in the morning, your lips will be sewn together.”

I slam the bathroom door to the sound of Quinn’s gloating laughter ringing in my ears.

THIRTY-FIVE